Hello from Kenya

It is Saturday afternoon and we are staying a couple hours out of Nairobi at a friends home near Lake Naivasha.  It seems hard to imagine that we were doing our last packing and heading to the airport a week ago today, and stranger still that two weeks ago we were in Ft. Worth, TX dropping of Mackenzie.  (Who, by the way, is loving TCU.)

Our first week here has exceeded all our expectations on both the personal and work fronts.              

                               

We are living at a place in the city called Amani Gardens.  It is a simple guest lodge where we share two small rooms, but the tight space is more than made up for by the amazing gardens and grounds.   Amani is the Swahili word for "Peace" and from the moment we woke up there last Monday, that is what we've experienced each day.  It is made all the more amazing when you remember you are right the middle of a busy city.

 

Molly and the kids have slid into a nice rhythm that feels in many ways like the ideal pace of life many of us yearn for in the States, yet struggle to find.  There is breakfast together, some time on their own, School online, (starting in earnest next week) Tea time, enjoying the grounds (Hanging the hammocks, chipping a golf ball, playing lacrosse etc.)  There is a hotel with a pool and gym up the street that we negotiated our way into and each day there has been time spent there.  Evenings are relaxing and, since we are near the equator, the sun goes down around 6:30 p.m. making for long sleeping nights.

We have toured around Nairobi a bit already and visited the Giraffe center and found a couple golf courses for Bennett.  We learned that with a Jr.s card that cost $12 he can play any course in the country for $1.  He played today and shared the course with one of Africa's iconic animals.
              

On the work front things are going very well.  I sent the following note to my board yesterday...

PFS Board,

Just a quick note to let you know my family and I arrived last Sunday night here in Nairobi.  We’ve had an excellent first week both on the work front and settling in to a very different life.  (Molly and the kids are so far loving their time.)

I have high expectations for these 4 months, and if these first 4 days are any indication of the time as a whole, I will not be disappointed.  A few highlights:

- I had my first leisurely conversation with one of our clients, the Kibe family, (1 down, 70 some to go!) where I was able to really understand their business, challenges, hopes for our partnership etc. 

- Ditto with Johnson, one of our long-standing TNS employees.  Hearing about what is going well, his challenges, opportunities…

- I was able to attend, with a last minute invitation from a friend, an intimate dinner with the head of the Kenya Parliament (Equiv. to US Speaker of the House), and several leading Kenyan CEOs where I heard 1st hand from leaders about where Kenya is and where it is going 

- Working with TechnoServe, I’ve seen a great calendar seamlessly come together that will allow us to be in Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Zambia over the next four months to connect with clients, staff, stakeholders/investors and donors/prospective donors.

- Johnson and Jonathan and I are heading in a couple hours to the new Buhler training center to meet with a Buhler exec. and discuss ways to leverage their training center and expertise

And finally, I’ve been energized by the dynamic environment that is Nairobi and have survived multiple trips driving myself across the city…Driving is an "all in" activity here!

As a reminder, here are my goals for this time:

1) Leveraging the completed Dalberg Opportunity Study to build support for next tranche of donor funding with institutional donors, like USAID missions, DFID, etc.  

2) Spending focused time with TNS staff to better understand their opportunities, challenges, constraints, aimed towards envisioning a potentially leaner/streamlined field staffing structure.

3) Visiting numerous/diverse PFS clients to better understand their opportunities, challenges, constraints, while capturing their stories of successes and identifying best practices of our interactions.

4) Over-seeing and enabling the highest likelihood for success of our recently initiated pilots for both the PFS Opportunity Fund and PFS Ventures.

6) Re-establishing and expanding of Africa based network and personal connections.

In other news, the week before I left we had a very good meeting with USAID in Washington DC where they very much affirmed our partnership (Peter, Hugh, John and Michelle attended on all of your behalf) They made it clear that they want to continue our partnership and will be working closely with us to achieve that outcome.  

We also had an excellent meeting with leadership from the _____ Company - the team we met is presenting to their CEO today.  They seemed very motivated and aligned to join us.

On the private fundraising front we’ve secured our first $1MM gift (Unrestricted over 5 years)  from a Minnesota family and we’ve just closed on two other sizable gifts of $400k and $300k from another individual family and a Foundation from Ireland.  $600k of those two gifts is targeted towards helping us build out our Ventures model to ultimately free us from needing institutional donor money. 

Finally, the team at home is doing a great job and is right now busy hosting our best training ever (among many other things) with 7 new Technoserve staff.  Hopefully some of you in MN will be able to intersect with TNS staff while they are there.  

All in all, while we have many of the normal pressing challenges of a dynamic, young, global organization, we have MUCH to be grateful for and a lot of momentum right now…

I look forward to a robust conversation/update at our Feb. board. meeting.

So, it has been a good 1st week and we finish it very grateful that we have the opportunity to be here as a family (minus 1) and to do the work that we are doing.  

Much Love from Kenya (and Ft. Worth)

The Dykstra Fam

On our way

We are sitting in the Amsterdam airport in sight of the seats where a conversation 2 months ago led to us sitting here today.  Grateful to be on our way and thankful for the opportunity.

Here is a pic from JFK 7.5 years ago and a pic from today...More luggage and more kids then...Same sense of anticipation.

Transitions

It is a week before we leave for Kenya and we are on a plane from Dallas/Fort Worth home.  Molly and I just spent several great days attending orientation and dropping Mackenzie off at TCU.  Every parent who has walked this road can identify with the bitter/sweet nature of this dance.  For those that have not yet crossed this threshold, this Op/Ed from the Washington Post describes it well. 

We feel incredibly thankful for where Mackenzie has landed - from the school she has chosen, to the roommates she is living with, to the classes she is taking, all of it points to a GREAT FIT for her.  

TCU’s mission, To educate individuals to think and act as ethical leaders and responsible citizens in the global community, and the way they seek to incorporate this mission into every aspect of the student’s experience, so resonates with what we have been trying to do as parents these last 18+ years.  She managed to find a medium sized school that has both the benefits of a large University (e.g. state of the art facilities and TCU should be playing for the Football's national championship Monday night) and a small liberal arts college (e.g. 3 of her 5 classes this semester have 15 or less students and the students were encouraged throughout orientation to get to know their professors.) Finally, the season of Spring comes to Fort Worth in about two or three weeks…so she is escaping the endless winters of her youth - smart child.  All said, as we head 8,000 miles from Mackenzie, we could not feel better about this next chapter for her or more grateful for the opportunity she has in front of her.
 
So, now we turn towards the four of us leaving for Africa in a week.  Molly, no surprise, has us in good shape from a logistics standpoint.  We have the house and dog taken care of, shots received, passports updated etc. etc. Unlike our move to Zambia 8 years ago where we packed up our house and took it to Lusaka, we are heading to Kenya with the approach that this is a long trip and we are packing accordingly.   

When we arrive in Nairobi we will initially, and maybe permanently, be staying at Amani Gardens. This is a quiet, 50 year old guest house right in the heart of Nairobi.  It is within walking distance of the office of our partner, TechnoServe, restaurants, shops etc.  Upon arrival, I will be jumping into work visiting clients like Doinyo Lessos, Girum Food Company and Astco and meeting with our partners and stakeholders like USAID, Root Capital and many others.  Molly and the kids will be doing online school, and engaging with organizations like Heshima, a school started for disabled kids (Clara’s passion) by a Minnesota family.  Bennett is also looking forward to playing lots of golf.  

We are excited and grateful to get to re-immerse ourselves in all the things we’ve missed about Africa - time for relationships and the way this is prioritized, joyfulness in the midst of hardships, dynamism, the generally slower pace of life, the wild and beautiful places we love and so much more.

We are glad this time the goodbyes are only for 4 months - we will be back before many of you even realize we are gone.  We look forward to sharing what we learn.